The film was released online on June 18, 2007, on zeitgeistmovie.com.[1] While the film has been praised by some for the professional-level quality of its pacing and editing, and for its compelling narrative, it has been criticized for factual inaccuracies and the quality of its arguments, with critics describing it as "agitprop" and "propaganda".[2][3][4]

Background[edit source | edit]

Zeitgeist: The Movie originally began as an art project. According to the Zeitgeist website, "The original Zeitgeist was not a film, but a performance piece, which consisted of a vaudevillian style multi-media event using recorded music, live instruments and video."[5]

Synopsis[edit source | edit]

Horusleft and Jesus right, both presented in the film as "solar messiahs".

According to journalist Michelle Goldberg, Zeitgeist: The Movie incorporates elements of the LaRouche movement.[6] The film opens with animated abstract visualizations, film and stock footage, a cartoon and audio quotes about spirituality by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, followed by clips of war, explosions, and the September 11 attacks. This is followed by the film's title screen. The film's introduction ends with a portion of the late comedian George Carlin's monologue on religion accompanied by an animated cartoon. The rest of the film, divided into three parts, is narrated by Peter Joseph.

Part I: The Greatest Story Ever Told[edit source | edit]

Part I questions religions as being god-given stories, arguing that the Christian religion specifically is mainly derived from other religions, astronomical assertions, astrological myths and traditions, which in turn were derived from or shared elements with other traditions. In furtherance of the Jesus myth hypothesis this part argues that the historical Jesus is a literary and astrological hybrid, nurtured politically. The work of Acharya S, author of The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold, was used extensively in Part I of the movie. She also acted as consultant for Part I of the movie.[7]

Part II: All the World's a Stage[edit source | edit]

Part II uses integral footage of several 9/11 conspiracy theory films and claims that the September 11 attacks were either orchestrated or allowed to happen by elements within the United States government in order to generate mass fear, initiate and justify the War on Terror, provide a pretext for the curtailment of civil liberties, and produce economic gain. These claims include assertions that the U.S. government had advance knowledge of the attacks, that the military deliberately allowed the planes to reach their targets, and that World Trade Center buildings 1, 2, and 7 underwent a controlled demolition.

This section also claims the Federal Reserve System is in fact controlled by a small cabal of international bankers ('the ethnicity of these money-lenders goes undisclosed') who then stage global calamities to spur federal spending and enrich themselves. [8]

The film states that modern U.S. wars are designed to sustain conflicts in general, as this forces the U.S. government to borrow money from the bank, allegedly increasing the profits of the "international bankers". The film then goes on to claim that the Federal Income Tax is illegal.

This section also claims the existence of a secret agreement to merge the United States, Canada and Mexico into a "North American Union". The creation of this North American Union is then alleged to be a step towards the creation of "One World Government." The film speculates that under such a government every human could be implanted with an RFID chip to monitor individuals and suppress dissent.

An updated version of Zeitgeist released in 2010 removes the North American Union section among other changes.[9]

Awards[edit source | edit]

The film was screened on November 10, 2007, at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood as part of the 4th Annual Artivist Film Festival, where it won the Best Feature Award in the Artivist Spirit category for feature-length documentaries.[10] In September 2008 Zeitgeist: The Movie also received a Special Acknowledgment Award at Rutger Hauer's ICFILMS Film Festival in Milan, Italy.[11]

Critical reaction[edit source | edit]

In Tablet magazine, journalist Michelle Goldberg criticized Zeitgeist: The Movie as being "steeped in far-right, isolationist, and covertly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories", and called the Zeitgeist movement "the world's first Internet-based cult, with members who parrot the party line with cheerful, rote fidelity." She went on to write that the film borrows from the work of Eustace Mullins, Lyndon LaRouche, and radio host Alex Jones, saying that Zeitgeist, the movie portrays a cabal of international bankers purportedly ruling the world.[6] The Zeitgeist group responded by saying the accusations were "erroneous, pejorative, derogatory and intended to silence the movement's message", and that the movement does not blame international bankers, corporate leaders or politicians as individuals, but rather the global socioeconomic system that supports their values.[12][13][14]

Conspiracy theory and propaganda[edit source | edit]

A review in The Irish Times entitled "Zeitgeist: the Nonsense" wrote that "these are surreal perversions of genuine issues and debates, and they tarnish all criticism of faith, the Bush administration and globalization—there are more than enough factual injustices in this world to be going around without having to invent fictional ones."[15] Other reviews have characterized the film as "conspiracy crap",[16] "based solely on anecdotal evidence" and "fiction couched in a few facts",[17] or disparaging reference is made to its part in the 9/11 truth movement.[18]

Some journalists have focused on it as an example of how conspiracy theories are promulgated in the Internet age. For example, Ivor Tossell in the Globe and Mail argued that contradictions in the film are overwhelmed by passion and effective use of video editing:

The film is an interesting object lesson on how conspiracy theories get to be so popular.... It's a driven, if uneven, piece of propaganda, a marvel of tight editing and fuzzy thinking. Its on-camera sources are mostly conspiracy theorists, co-mingled with selective eyewitness accounts, drawn from archival footage and often taken out of context. It derides the media as a pawn of the International Bankers, but produces media reports for credibility when convenient. The film ignores expert opinion, except the handful of experts who agree with it. And yet, it's compelling. It shamelessly ploughs forward, connecting dots with an earnest certainty that makes you want to give it an A for effort.[19]

Filipe Feio, reflecting upon the film's Internet popularity in Diário de Notícias, stated that "Fiction or not, Zeitgeist: The Movie threatens to become the champion of conspiracy theories of today."[20]

Jane Chapman, a film producer and reader in media studies at the University of Lincoln, called Zeitgeist "a fast-paced assemblage of agitprop", an example of unethical film-making.[22] She accuses Peter Joseph of "implicit deception" through the use of unreferenced and undated assertions, and standard film-making propaganda techniques. While parts of the film are, she says, "comically" self-defeating, the nature of "twisted evidence" and use of Madrid bomb footage to imply it is of the London bombings amount to ethical abuse in sourcing. In later versions of the movie a subtitle is added to this footage identifying it as from the Madrid bombings. She finishes her analysis with the comment:

Thus legitimate questions about what happened on 9/11, and about corruption in religious and financial organizations, are all undermined by the film's determined effort to maximize an emotional response at the expense of reasoned argument.

TheMarker[12] characterized the evidence presented by Joseph in the movie as, for the most part, incomplete at best, and based on speculation at worst. TheMarker also wrote: "After all, the film was an art project, not intended as a coherent socio-economic analysis but to serve Joseph's creativity." TheMarker wrote that Joseph received severe criticism, and summarized the criticism by The Irish Times[15] (See above). TheMarker further wrote that Joseph is now trying to distance himself as far as possible from the conspiracy claims of the first film, and that an updated version of the film, released in 2010, dropped the claim on the unification of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. TheMarker additionally wrote that Joseph said that not all of the claims made in the first film should be taken very seriously, because the claims are designed to create a dramatic effect. In addition, TheMarker also quotes Joseph as saying: "You need to make the information you present compelling, otherwise people get bored to death. So some people think I'm extreme, what can I do."[12][23]

Chip Berlet writes that the 9/11 conspiracy theories "are bait used to attract viewers from the 9/11 Truth Movement and others who embrace conspiracist thinking to the idiosyncratic anti-religion views of the videographer and the world of right-wing antisemitic theories of a global banking conspiracy."[24] On March 17, 2009, in a New York Times article, Alan Feuer reported that Peter Joseph had indicated that he had "moved away from" his opinion on whether the September 11 attacks were an inside job perpetrated by the U.S. government, but a later clarification on the Zeitgeist Movement website clarified that Joseph was shifting his focus, not retracting his views.[18]

Regarding the origins of Christianity[edit source | edit]

Skeptic magazine's Tim Callahan, criticizing the first part of the film (on the origins of Christianity), wrote that "some of what it asserts is true. Unfortunately, this material is liberally – and sloppily – mixed with material that is only partially true and much that is plainly and simply bogus."[25]

Chris Forbes, Senior lecturer in Ancient History of Macquarie University and member of the Synod of the Diocese of Sydney, severely criticized Part I of the movie, asserting that it has no basis in serious scholarship or ancient sources, and that it relies on amateur sources that recycle frivolous ideas from one another, rather than serious academic sources, commenting, "It is extraordinary how many claims it makes which are simply not true."[26] Similar conclusions were reached by Dr. Mark Foreman of Liberty University.[27]

Acharya S (also known as D.M. Murdock), a source and consultant on the film, responded to Callahan's critique,[28] to which Callahan responded in turn.[29] Acharya also responded to Forbes's statements, insisting that the primary sources used in her research support the ideas in her writings.[30]

Sequels and the Zeitgeist Movement[edit source | edit]

A sequel, Zeitgeist: Addendum, focuses further on the monetary system and advocates a resource-based social system influenced by the ideas of Jacque Fresco and the Venus Project. Following Zeitgeist: Addendum, Peter Joseph created an organization called the Zeitgeist Movement to promote the ideas of Fresco's Venus Project.[31] An updated version of the original film was produced in 2010 entitled Zeitgeist: Final Edition.[32] A third film called Zeitgeist: Moving Forward was released theatrically on January 15, 2011, and online on January 25, 2011.[33] Peter Joseph has stated that its topics are focused on human behavior, technology, and rationality.

In April 2011, the Venus Project formally disassociated itself from Zeitgeist.[34]

^Goldberg, Michelle (February 2, 2011). "Brave New World". Tablet Magazine. "The documentary that started it all began as an art project. “The original Zeitgeist was not a film, but a performance piece, which consisted of a vaudevillian style multi-media event using recorded music, live instruments and video,” the Zeitgeist website explains."

^ abGoldberg, Michelle (February 2, 2011). "Brave New World". Tablet Magazine. "The first Zeitgeist documentary borrowed from the work of Eustace Mullins, Lyndon LaRouche, and Alex Jones to rail against the cabal of international bankers that purportedly rules the world."

^Discussion of the Zeitgeist movement with Peter Joseph, TheMarkerTV, Jan. 19, 2012. Interview conducted in English, following a brief introduction in Hebrew. The brief Hebrew introduction states: "Hello, Peter Joseph is with us, he is the filmmaker and director who created the Zeitgeist film series and The Zeitgeist movement, which advances for a global socio-economic change. The Zeitgeist films were among the most popular films in the history of the Internet, and Peter is here to answer a few questions regarding the nature of the Zeitgeist movement."